It is always nice when a new artist turns up at the club, and this season
we have had a varied selection of new artists, some local and some from
further afield. Tonight we had Liz Simcock, a singer songwriter based in
London. She sometimes performs with accompaniment from Boo Howard and
Dave Ellis, but tonight she was on her own.

I knew that we were in for some good music as I had previously heard her
songs on Spotify and YouTube, but it is always much better to watch a
live performance. As she sang her first song “City Girl”, which was a
nice way of introducing herself, I was reminded of Christine Collister,
particularly in the careful voice control and clarity of the lyrics.
Most of the songs she performed were based on her own experiences with
inevitable introspection. None more so than in the wonderful Letisha
Boccemski, which is an anagram of her name. Letisha is her confident
alter-ego telling her to ignore the unwelcome advice that performers
always seem to attract. The lyrics were nicely put together and well
worth listening to:

“Letisha Boccemski says "What do they know?
Have faith in yourself and just go with the flow”

A song like that is a good way of deflecting well meaning advice and
good to do early in the evening. One of my favourites was “The Bouzouki
and The W3”, a bluesy number telling the story of how she left her
Bouzouki on the W3 bus and didn’t get it back until three days later. A
catchy tune with some catchy clever lyrics to match. Another song which
again had that bluesy feel was “Pink and Silver Sneakers” a deceptively
simple song with some very clever Dylanesque rap style lyrics. This was
one of those songs that had been worked on for hours and hours with the
rhyming picked over until it was exactly right:

“But seeing is believing and believe me when you see me
You’ll believe it, it will leave you without any doubt at all”.

As the first half progressed she built up a warm empathy with the
audience and was quite relaxed with the usual club banter. She had made
a hit with the audience and in the break everyone was commenting on what
a nice person she was, and asking why she hadn’t been to the club
before.

Although there was only one song with a chorus before the break, she
made up for it in the second half which contained several songs giving
the opportunity audience participation. The first song that got everyone
going was Harry’s Eyes. She got us all singing the refrain over and over
again until we put in some harmony, and once satisfied with our
performance she launched into the song. It takes a lot of confidence and
skill to get away with this, but she did, and we loved it. Following on
with this success we had The Knitting Song with the chorus which started
off with: “ Knit One Purl One, knit two together” which she admitted men
aren’t so keen on singing, but of course we did.

All in all it was an excellent evening, which was pervaded by a relaxed
feel-good factor. We enjoyed her company, her music and her songs and we
are all looking forward to a return visit.
Support was provided by Dick Woodhouse and Bryn Phillips.